Character Blanks/Charart Tutorials
CLICK THIS LINK to view the tutorials done by multiple (fantastic and dedicated) users on this Wiki! ---- Contents To make it easier to navigate. *'Downloading the Blanks'; how you download these blanks to use them. *'Shading and Lighting'; self-explanatory; how to shade and add lighting onto your cats! *'Videos'; yet again, self-explanatory, video tutorials. *'Lessons'; lesson section, to teach you about subjects like white spotting, the different tabby markings, etc. *'Colours of Colourpoint'; explaining the different colours of the Colourpoint pattern. *'Tabby Pattern'; painting a tabby cat. **'Tabby Pattern, Updated'; painting and shading a tabby cat. *'Solid Colour'; painting a solid cat. *'Black Tortoiseshell'; painting a tortoiseshell cat which is primarily black. *'Red Tortoiseshell'; painting a tortoiseshell cat which is primarily ginger. *'Calico Pattern'; painting a calico cat. *'Torbie Pattern'; painting a tabby-tortoiseshell. *'Dilute and Chocolate Tortoiseshell'; a joint tutorial, painting a diluted tortoiseshell as well as a chocolate tortoiseshell. *'Bi-Colour'; painting bi-colour cats. **'Tuxedo Pattern'; painting a bi-colour cat in the tuxedo-pattern. **'Patched Pattern'; painting a patched bi-colour cat. *'Pointed Pattern'; painting a pointed cat. ---- General Information Downloading the Blanks This is quite an easy step, but I might explain it badly. Go onto the "Character Blanks" page on this Wikia, and click the blank you want to use. After you have a tab that looks like this: up, you'll have to click the title of that picture, which is the underlined BLUE text, and then wait for the tab to load. Once your page looks like this: You have to left-click the large image of the cat blank. You'll be sent to a page that looks like this: Then, right-click the image and click "Save image as..." (this downloading method can vary depending on what electronic software you are using!!). I'd suggest keeping the title the same, maybe deleting the fur-length (E.g., "name.leader.short", "name.kit.long") in the title. Choose where you want the image to be saved to, then click "Save". Getting the Blank into your Painting Program! Next, open up (this is the suggested program, but you don't have to use it specifically. Many other programs work, such as FireAlpaca, Paint Tool SAI, Gimp and Photoshop!) MediBang Paint Pro. (Make sure you only use the provided link to download MediBang Paint Pro! It's risky to use another link, as you might get a virus!) When on Medibang (or your personal painting software. The commands will likely be the same), don't worry, you don't have to create an account, but it's suggested, click "File". Top left corner!! When you have that tab open, click "Open..."! Go to the folder/place where you saved your blank to, and either double-click that, for an instant open, or click it once and then click "Open". Getting everything Ready Then, when your blank has loaded onto the program, you have to click the "MagicWand Tool". Here, it's encircled in blue: Once you have clicked that tool, click on the empty space around the cat. don't click inside the cat!! Done? Above the MagicWand Tool, there is a wonky circle. That's the Lasso Tool. Click that, and then hold down "SHIFT" on your keyboard. I would suggest zooming in to do this, but it doesn't matter. Done? Okay, keep holding down SHIFT, circle around the whiskers, as they have been selected, and then let go. Make sure you didn't make any of the blue inside of the cat go white!! Now, at the top of your screen, see "Select"? Click that!! Okay, after you've clicked it, click "inverse". At this, the blue in the cat should turn to white/transparent, and the white/transparent background should turn to blue. Yes? Now, click on the paper-looking icon in the bottom right corner! (Encircled with blue) That creates a new layer. Drag that new layer underneath "Layer 1"!! Shading and Lighting I would suggest putting these two layers on the "Clipping" option after you are finished with everything, so you do not have to take up like 5000 hours of your life carefully erasing everything on the outside of the cat. This takes up, depending on how fast you do it, a little bit more time than if you just left the blank be after colouring, but if you really want to shade, here's how you do it. First, make sure you have a fully coloured cat before starting. As I'm making the queen blank/drawing for Marshywillow's OC, Brightwing, I'm going to use her as an example cat. Anyway, once you have your cat ready for shading, create a new layer. Make sure this is below Layer1 (with your lines on) but above the colouring layer! Done? Now, select a generally dark colour (make sure it's not purely black!) using the colour-picker box, encircled with blue. I've tinted my colour purple, so it will give out a hint of purple when everything is finished. (Make sure to make the colour a little bit lighter than my selected one if you are working with dark-coloured cats, like black ones. For black cats, I'd honestly suggest not shading, but it is purely your choice.) Okay, now you can start drawing on the shadows! I personally use the Lasso Tool to select the places I want to shade. For a tip, mainly aimed at beginners, draw a small/big arrow pointing in the direction of where the light is coming from. I generally don't suggest selecting everything in one go, since shadows occasionally disconnect, but it's your choice. Now, you can select a large sized brush and just colour everything in! Next, change the effects setting to "Multiply" And then lower the opacity to your preferred transparency. - Next, create a new layer. This is for the light. - Do the same thing as you did with the shading and selecting. Okay, now colour it in with generally the same colour of yellow that I'm using. Now, change that effect setting to "Add" Lower the opacity accordingly. And you're done! (I generally faintly blur everything before I export, but you don't have to if you don't want to.) Note Unless it is in your cat’s design, don’t do the gradient effect, as featured on the tabbies, on any blank unless stated otherwise on the tutorial. It works on the tabbies due to this effect faintly happening on a cat’s coat, caused by their stripes, but not on any other coat. If you put it on a, say, black cat, it will mainly just look unnatural. Thanks! Tutorials Tabby In the colour-choosing area, middle-top left of your screen, kind of obvious, choose the colour of cat you want to create! I chose brown :D Okay. Now, select the tool, in the "Brush" box underneath "Colour", "Brush Preview" and "Brush Control", "PEN". Make its size quite big, (MAKE SURE YOU ARE ON "LAYER 2") and then just colour in the cat. If you saw in the picture before the previous, at the bottom left corner, I added a small message. Go back and check if you didn't see it!! Anyway, select the tool "Watercolour (Wet)" and create a new layer. Select either a darker or lighter, depending on what colour the cat's stripes are, and start drawing their stripes :D For a "beginner", I'd say use a few references of real-life cats and start out with simple, straight lines as stripes, but it is purely your choice. I'm making it so this cat has swirly stripes, though :D If your cat has lighter/darker markings, add them! Mine has a gingery muzzle, chest, paws, under-tail and underbelly. (Add a new layer! Layer 4 :D -- Drag it underneath the stripes layer, or over, depending on how the markings work!!) Okay, finished? Now, add the nose (and ear-inside) colours and the eye colour! (Remember, new layer! Put this one above everything else, but NOT the lineart!) To export your image, click onto "File" again and then click "Export..."! For the leader blank, the canvas size is 1000 x 800, so if you are creating a leader, make the size that! I'd also suggest changing the option (top, right) from simply "PNG" to "Transparent PNG", so the background isn't simply white! I forgot to do that with my one, so that is why the background is plain white :) Finished <3 Tabby (UPDATED!) First, obviously, get your blank up on your paint program. You can find out how to download them at the top of this page! Colour it in with whatever colour you want! In this case, I'm going to do a grey tabby. Make a new layer on top of the grey. I am going to do these stripes with a 12.8 brush. I usually start doing stripes around the shoulder part. I get one stripe then I start doing different directions. It is very important you start changing directions because that's what stripes are all about. If you have a graphics tablet, lean light and heavy whilst doing these stripes, it really helps! Keep going, changing directions and stuff, slowly start going down the body of the cat and doing more stripes, I didn't use a reference but it is recommended. Finally finished! Alright, now disable all your layers. Go on the lineart layer and select the outside. Erase all the outside. Like so, now to deselect it. Use that option that I circled, unless you do it a different way, it's fine. I clipped on the stripes to the grey layer. You can see that at the side. I then smudged the stripes, at a size of 15 and at a rate of 48 (I think) but yet again this is optional. I did it for a smooth look. I added white underneath the stripes layer and disabled the stripes layer just until I finished touching up this white. The white is optional! I gaussian blurred the white at a rate of 2. To use gaussian blur on Medibang, click the "filter" tab at the top and it should be in there somewhere. Smudge the white lightly. You can see my settings at the side. Perfect, now we can enable the stripes again. This is what it looks like! Now I start the shading (on a multiply layer). Never ever use black to shade! I used a dark blue, a cold colour, to fit grey, another cold colour. While at my shading too, I did the eye colour, nose and ears. I also added a gradient-like effect which I forgot to screenshot but that's optional too! Start shading the parts you'd like to be darker. Think about a light source. I used an add layer, an airbrush and a yellowish-cream colour to highlight. Next, which is also a completely optional step is I use another add layer, I tone it down to about 20-30%, and I just draw a line along the back and other lighter parts. Gaussian blurred at a rate of one and toned it down to 19%! That is us finished. Finished result! Sorry I did not explain this quite well. I was in a rush and will make more carefully planned tutorials in the future. Solid '-Using Medibang Paint Pro, but this works for various art programs too.-' So you wanna load in the base, as normal, since its the StarClan one, I often colour a random colour and lower the opacity. : Now you've got that, make a layer above and grab a natural colour, eg. A pale, blue-grey. (It doesn't have to be natural, but if for an article, please do.) : Colour it in, like below. As I said in my voice tutorial, I often colour the whole thing and I will show how to erase it to in my tips. : Add earpink, nose and eye colour. Tortoiseshell Of course, there are many other ways of drawing tortoiseshell cats. For example, you could use the "Fluffy Watercolour" tool to create the patterns- that takes much less time. But, this is the way I do it ^^ Black Tortoiseshell Okay, so... what you want to do is get a preferably dark base, maybe the same colour as mine, and just colour the blank in with that. Then, you want to select a gingery colour. Afterwards, select your normal pen tool or perhaps Watercolour (Wet), and start drawing on the areas where you want the brindle to be. (new layer) Now, add brown to that. (again, in a different layer) Merge all of your layers together, excluding the lines layer!!! Okay, done? Now you want to select your "Smudge" tool, and lower the opacity on it. Then, select a generally small size, but not too small, and basically, just start smudging out the ginger/brown patterns- this creates an almost fur-like "texture" on the cat. (MAKE SURE TO PUT "PROTECT ALPHA" ON!!) I usually go over it twice; once with an 8.9 size brush, one with a 10ish size brush. Now add the ear-pink, nose colour and eye colour and you're finished! (I decided to shade this one) Red Tortoiseshell Firstly, you need to get your selected lineart into whichever drawing program. For everything to be easier, I suggest looking on Google and finding a reference of a tortoiseshell cat with a lot of ginger on them, rather than black. Then, I'd also suggest laying out a colour palette above your drawing on a different layer to the lineart. If you want, feel free to use the colours I selected for this tutorial. Secondly, create a new layer and put it below the lineart. This will be used for colouring. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR LINEART SELECTED SO NO COLOUR ESCAPES! Once you've done that, you can put down your base colour on the new layer. Afterwards, create another layer above the colour and put a clipping mask on it. Create a tabby pattern. You can do this however you'd like, just as long as it's actually a tabby. Make a new layer underneath the tabby. This step is completely optional. Get a lighter colour than the base, and draw pale parts on the cat's muzzle, chest, and underbelly. Yet again, make another new layer, but this time, have it on top of the rest of the colour layers. Don't forget the clipping mask!! Press "insert" on your keyboard or use the colour bucket to fill the entire cat in with black (NEVER USE PURE BLACK!) This might be hard, but select the "eraser" (or "rubber") tool and delete most of the black to make large tabby areas (make it look random! Always keep a little bit of the black there <3) Merge all of your tabby layers together. Keep the black layer separate! Make a new layer underneath the black layer. Have it clipped onto the tabby layer. Use a reddy-brown colour and go around the black lines to make a thin, brown separation line between the black and tabby. Merge all of the layers together, not including the lineart and colour palette. Use your smudge brush to make a tortoiseshell pattern. I've highlighted my options if you needed help getting those ready. Add the eye colour, nose and ear pink, and the ear fluff's colour (with the new loner blank, always colour the "open mouth bit" grey-pink or white! Just shade it, and then you're done! Calico First of all, get a base colour of pale off-white (never use pure white, especially if you're going to shade). Add a layer below that and draw a ginger (or cream) tabby coat. You can do this however you want, just make sure it's a tabby. (I drew a spotted mackerel tabby) Merge all of the tabby layers together! Just above the tabby layer, create a new one, and fill it in completely with black (NEVER USE PURE BLACK!). Okay, the boring stuff's out of the way now. On your white layer, select the rubber (or eraser) tool and create black patches in the white. You can make them however you'd like, but make sure the majority of the cat's body is still white. Now, go onto your black layer. Remove as much black as you want there to be ginger. Add the eye, nose, and ear colour. Shade, and then you're done! Sorry for making such a short tutorial! There wasn't much to say. Torbie again, coming VERY soon Dilute Tortoiseshell ~ Chocolate Tortoiseshell coming VERY soon c': Bi-Colour Tuxedo Although this pattern is relatively easy, some people can get it slightly incorrect. First off, start with your base colour on the cat. A tuxedo cat preferably has a black base coat and white markings, like a "tuxedo", but in all honesty, it doesn't have to be! Remember, create a new layer before you start drawing on your markings!! Okay, next take a white (or tinted white) and start drawing on your pale markings. Make sure to not put the lighter colours where the black/darker colour is, otherwise it generally wouldn't be classified as a tuxedo pattern. Try not to put random blobs of colour on the paws, tail, muzzle, etc. and actually zoom into the cat's areas to place the white on. Now, all you have to do to finish it is add the eye colour and nose/pad/ear colour, then you're finished!! Patched On your second layer, put down a white base colour, or tinted-white. Then, create a new layer and just draw on your patches. It doesn't have to specifically be black, (as you can see, I used cream) honestly, so you can use just any old colour! (As long as it stays natural. Especially if you are making this for an article!!) Now, all you have to do to finish it is add the eye colour and nose/pad/ear colour, then you're finished!! Colourpoint First of all, start off with a very slightly off-white (or very pale cream) colour and fill the entire body with that on a new layer below the lineart one. Once you've done that, on a new layer (above the white), draw on the cat's "points". I'm drawing a blue point in this, but you don't have to! Reminder that the points are ONLY on the *Face *Ears *Legs *Tail Then, softly blur the points to make them connect to the white more smoothly. I'd suggest you use a slightly bigger brush to blur the leg colour! Once you've done that, you're generally done. Just touch up on some colours, add the eye, nose, and ear colour, shade (optional), and then you're finished! Colours of the Colourpoint coat There are many colours of the Colourpoint cat, but the most common are the Blue and Seal points. If you think of a Siamese or Ragdoll cat, you'd likely think of those two colourations at first instead of any other. Anyway, I've made some quick chararts showing each colour (excluding tortie and torbie points) to help out! Blue (Grey/Gray) Point. Chocolate Point. Cinnamon Point. Cream Point. Fawn Point. Lilac Point. Red/Flame (Ginger) Point. Seal (Black) Point. Most of these may seem similar, but they're honestly not. Feel free to colour pick from these images for your own chararts x There's not much else to say, sorry! ;v; ---- Videos Note (There are many types of tabby cats in the world! You do not have to follow the stripe patterns or this tutorial purely to create a tabby cat. If you want to vary your drawings so they don't all look the same, I'd suggest using some references of tabby cats from Google Images!) More videos will come in the future! We will not limit it just to tabbies. Seyri, aka Veswza, has more videos planned for patterns like tortoiseshells and other coat patterns. Maybe even Marsh too. Stay tuned! ---- Lessons White-Spotting White-Spotting is a gene that covers a part of a cat's base coat, whether it be black, tabby, tortoiseshell, whatever. It can be ranked in percentages (%) or in grades. For example, Stormstar (PR) from the fanfiction Primroses could be classified as having 10% white or rather, low-grade white spotting (<40%), while Brownstar (also from Primroses), would be considered to have 45-50% white spotting, also known as medium grade (40%-60%). Cats like Snowberry would be considered to have high-grade white-spotting, which is >60% (above 60%). With tortoiseshells, there's a colouring called "tortoiseshell and white", which is a tortoiseshell cat (whatever pattern- red, black, dilute, etc.) with low-to-medium-grade white spotting. This means that they still have their original brindled/mottled pattern, but simply have, say, white paws and a white chest. There's also a pattern called calicos. Unlike tortoiseshell and white cats, calicos have high-grade white spotting, which causes their brindled fur to start to patch. You'd never see a calico cat with still brindled fur unless it had lower than 60% white spotting. If you are a more visual learner, you can go here and here for help. ---- Category:Tutorial Category:Blanks